Then Georgiana Wanless had been, as it were, thrown at his head. When one is pelted with sugar-plums one can hardly resent the attack. He was clever enough to feel that he was pelted, but at first he liked the sweetmeats. A girl riding on horseback, with her back square to the horse’s tail, with her reins well held, and a chimney-pot hat on her head, is an object, unfortunately, more attractive to the eyes of ordinary men, than a young woman pushing a perambulator with two babies. Unfortunately, I say, because in either case the young woman should be judged by her personal merits and not by externals. But the Major declared to himself that the personal merits would be affected by the externals. A girl who had pushed a perambulator for many years, would hardly have a soul above perambulators. There would be wanting the flavour of the aroma of romance, that something of poetic vagueness without which a girl can hardly be altogether charming to the senses of an appreciative lover. Then, a little later on, he asked himself whether Georgiana Wanless was romantic and poetic,--whether there was much of true aroma there.
But yet he thought that fate would require him to marry Georgiana Wanless, whom he certainly did not love, and to leave Alice to her perambulator,--Alice, whom he certainly did love. And as he thought of this, he was ill at ease with himself. It might be well that he should give up his Assistant Deputy Inspector-Generalship, go back to India, and so get rid of his two troubles together. Fate, as he personified fate to himself in this matter,--took the form of Lady Wanless. It made him sad to think that he was but a weak creature in the hands of an old woman, who wanted to use him for a certain purpose;--but he did not see his way of escaping. When he began to console himself by reflecting that he would have one of the handsomest women in London at his dinner-table he knew that he would be unable to escape.
About the middle of July he received the following letter from Lady Wanless:--
“DEAR MAJOR ROSSITER,--The girls have been at their father for the last ten days to have an archery meeting on the lawn, and have at last prevailed, though Sir Walter has all a father’s abhorrence to have the lawn knocked about. Now it is settled. ‘I’ll see about it,’ Sir Walter said at last, and when so much as that had been obtained, they all knew that the archery meeting was to be. Sir Walter likes his own way, and is not always to be persuaded. But when he has made the slightest show of concession, he never goes back from it. Then comes the question as to the day, which is now in course of discussion in full committee. In that matter Sir Walter is supposed to be excluded from any voice. ‘It cannot matter to him what day of the week or what day of the month,’ said Georgiana very irreverently. It will not, however, much matter to him so long as it is all over before St. Partridge comes round.